2007-08-04 - 1:12 p.m. Readin' corner: These stuffy dawg days of August are the perfect time for dopey mysteries and fun non-fiction, even if one's reading is done on subways and not on the beach... (Man, I gotta get to a beach soon). Anyway, I recently discovered a really enjoyable Agatha Christie novel that never gets mentioned along with her best but, IMO, ranks up there and is even a little bit philosophical: Sad Cypress, featuring my fave Belgian detective. Now I'm reading Stephen King's contribution to the ginchy Hard Case Crime series. It's very good so far--the proverbial page-turnah. (King is an obscure US horror/thriller writer who wrote a few other books, too.) And I also have been reading, in dribs if not actual drabs, the wry Where's My Jetpack? by Daniel Wilson, a science writer who also has written for Wired and is quite enamored of robots. He addresses the disappointing technological non-progress that has left us without robot servants, smell-o-vision, space vacations, moon colonies, and all the other things that Starchild's report promised. One of my least favorite musical tropes is "songs about music." From "Rock Around the Clock" forward (and most likely backward, with songs about lindy-hoppin' and such), pop music has been riddled with stupid songs about...itself. About rockin', or dancin', or plannin' to rock later on. However, today I identified the exception to my own annoyance that is, in fact, a lovely song of gratitude for the healing properties of music. I'm not gonna tell you what it is, you have to guess. I will say that it is from 1973, it was covered years later by an artist I don't like, and every time I hear it on the radio or in a store, I start out feeling a warm splash of nostalgia in my heart which turns into genuine pleasure and admiration for a corny but sweet song... thoughts? (18 comments so far) previous - next blog archive contact